TELEVISION

TELEVISION; 'Challenger' Looks At the Human Side Of the Disaster

By ROBERTO SURO

Published: February 18, 1990

HOUSTON—
''Challenger,'' a TV film about the shuttle disaster that will be broadcast next Sunday evening at 8 on ABC, begins with an auspicious claim of factual authenticity. While most other docudramas merely give notice at the end of the credits that they are based on a book or two, this production offers a lengthy message that appears in white letters on a black screen. Read by a disembodied voice, it informs viewers that the dramatization was based on personal interviews, a variety of journalistic accounts and Government investigations, that scenes were filmed at the Johnson Space Center and that ''this picture was researched with the consultation of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration.''

Accuracy may be more of an issue with this docudrama than others because the film depicts the causes and the victims of a national tragedy still freshly remembered. Over the course of its three hours ''Challenger'' does not break new ground or raise new controversies about the disastrous launch from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida on the morning of Jan. 28, 1986. But it does take events reported in bloodless Government documents or in disputed testimony and renders them in dramatic dialogue that is mostly invented.

About three-quarters of the film is a depiction of the final months, and especially the final hours, of the shuttle's seven crew members, two of whom were ''civilian'' specialists. The remainder explores the fact that there were strong reasons for concern that the shuttle booster might malfunction.

''I wanted to do something like 'The Bridge of San Luis Rey,' '' said George Englund, the film's writer and executive producer. Mr. Englund was referring to Thornton Wilder's novel about a group of disparate personalities drawn together at a moment of disaster. ''The minute I heard of it I thought this is a Thornton Wilder-type story about an array of ordinary Americans,'' Mr. Englund added. ''It is about the notion that very terrestrial, mundane people go into space.''

Although the film does not impute anything more negative than the mundane to any of the crew members, some of their survivors complained publicly about the production when filming was underway last summer in Clear Lake, Tex., the Houston suburb where the Johnson Space Center is located. Several of the astronauts' wives told reporters that their privacy was being invaded and that their mourning was being disturbed. Concerns were also expressed that fictional scenes were being presented as fact. Mr. Englund insists that everything in the production has some basis in reality and that at least six of the families were, as he put it, ''helpful'' in making the film, even if some of them were not altogether happy with the final script. He acknowledges that he received no assistance from the family of Christa McAuliffe, the New Hampshire schoolteacher who emerges as the star of the crew.

The production also received less than a hearty welcome from NASA officials. Mr. Englund said he had a number of ''icy encounters'' before convincing top figures at the space agency that he intended to make a serious and accurate film about NASA's darkest hour. Harold Stall, director of public affairs at the Johnson Space Center, said recently, ''If NASA was interested in selling itself, this is not the dramatic vehicle NASA would have chosen.'' The agency's role in the production is important because ''Challenger'' offers a dramatic summary of the debate among engineers at NASA and at Morton Thiokol Inc., the manufacturer of the shuttle booster, over the effectiveness of the O-rings, the rubbery seals that eventually failed and were the physical cause of the fatal explosion. At an ABC press conference last month, Mr. Englund asserted, ''All the departments involved at NASA read the script and signed off on it.''

NASA officials take a more limited view of their role in the making of the film. Mr. Stall said, ''Our position is that we do not take a position regarding anyone making a movie about NASA. We make our facilities available to any production so long as there is no interference with our operations, and we answer any queries about facts or documents. We do not approve or disapprove of scripts.'' In a recent interview, Mr. Englund explained that ''when I said NASA 'signed off,' I meant that at the beginning of the process I told them my ambition was to get this story absolutely right, and I asked their help. I showed them versions of the script from the first draft to the final screenplay, to make sure it was all accurate. Then, there was no official signing off as far as we are concerned.''

The O-rings are dealt with in a series of scenes salted throughout the film that serve to function as a counterpoint to the script's major focus on the astronauts' training, their family lives and their excitement about going into space. Mr. Englund said he felt obliged to make ''Challenger'' primarily a human-interest film about the crew members.

Complaining that television audiences have become accustomed to primitive forms of exposition, he said that he ''worried all along about how much of the O-ring stuff we could do without numbing people.'' ''Challenger,'' however, does convey the ambiguities reflected in official findings that many people shared the blame for brushing aside warnings voiced in the months before the fateful launch. The film re-creates a key telephone conference on the night before the disaster when the engineers decided not to abort the launch despite concerns that the unusually cold weather could affect the O-rings' performance. Although the film re-creates conversations that went unrecorded, a number of memorable phrases in the dialogue can be found in testimony about what happened.

Morton Thiokol refused to make its employees available to Mr. Englund, and he has acknowledged that there could be several subjective recollections of the events depicted. Indeed, he said that the rendition of the prelaunch conference reflects the views of Roger Boisjoly, the Morton Thiokol engineer who most actively drew attention to the O-rings and who is played by Peter Boyle. He became the chief whistle-blower in the investigation and was then allegedly punished by the company for his outspokenness. The producers acquired the rights to Mr. Boisjoly's version of the story.

While some details of ''Challenger'' may come in for criticism, the film overall seems to agree with the conclusion reached by the Presidential commission: that processes rather than personalities were at fault.